Alliance
An Alliance is a mutual non-aggression agreement between two wizards as well as an agreement to help each other out in case of a War involving one of the wizards. Any player, human or AI, can propose this treaty to another, unless there is a War ongoing between the two players. However, unless the offer was made between two AI players, the other party has to accept the offer for the treaty to form. Ways of forming an Alliance For the chance of an AI player offering the treaty to the human player, see AI to Player Diplomacy, positive diplomacy section. Once the offer has been made, selecting the reply "Accept" is enough to form the treaty. Rejecting the offer might result in the AI player offering additional gold or a spell and repeating the request. Accepting it this time results in the human player gaining whichever resources were offered. Rejecting it again has no negative consequences. If the treaty offer is going to be made, but the human player is having an Alliance with another wizard who is at War with the offering wizard, they will first request the human player to break that Alliance. Refusal of that request results in a penalty to Visible Relations. For the chance of two AI players forming this treaty between them, see AI to AI Diplomacy. In order for the human player to offer this treaty to a rival wizard, they have to click on their portrait on the MAGIC screen to initiate an audience, and the rival wizard needs to be willing to grant one. To make the offer, select "Propose Treaty" and "Alliance" from the menu. Upon doing so, the rival wizard will go through the following process to decide on a reply : # Check Visible Relation. If it's lower than +50, immediately refuse the offer without an changes in any temporal variables, or any effect at all. The wizard completely ignores the offer as though it was never made in the first place. # Calculate X= Treaty Interest + Hidden Relation + Visible Relation + Personality Modifier + Military Modifier - Proposal Difficulty + random (1-100), where Proposal Difficulty is 125. # If X< -75 then the offer is refused. If X<-50 but >=-75 then they'll demand a spell. If X>=-50 but <0 then they'll demand gold. If X>=0 then they'll accept the proposal. # Finally, the Peace Interest and Trade Interest variables are reduced by 10, and the Treaty Interest variable is reduced by a random amount between 30-60. This process is slightly different in the 1.50 unofficial patch. Step 1, 3 and 4 are unchanged. Step 2 calculates X= Treaty Interest /2 + Hidden Relation + Visible Relation + Personality Modifier + Military Modifier - Proposal Difficulty - 10*Game Difficulty + random(1-30) instead. The Military Modifier in this calculation is significantly different than originally. Effects of an Alliance An Alliance's primary goal is to provide military help to the allied player, and fight together against shared enemies. It is also an extension of a WIzard's Pact, and has its effects too. Relation improvement over time At the end of each turn there is a 50% chance of generating a base strength +random(1-6) Diplomatic Reaction event with no message. In the unofficial 1.50 patch, the chance for this is 1/3 only, and the amount is random(1-4). This effect is strong enough to improve relations significantly over a long period of time, even if natural gravitation towards the Starting Relation is reducing the effect. No hostility AI wizards will always set Hostility to None when evaluating it if an Alliance is in effect. Due to this, they will not willingly attack the player's cities or units, and will avoid casting hostile spells at them. They can, however, attack the player by accident, for example engineers building a road into the human player's cities. In the 1.40 unofficial patch, the AI gains the ability to cancel these attacks at the time they would happen, and retract the movement of their units. They will always do this to make sure they don't violate the Alliance. Unfortunately, the change in the shortest path algorithm allows walking through cells occupied by units in a much looser fashion, so they will attempt to move through these cells and end up retracting movement rather frequently, resulting in stacks being unable to proceed to their destination. In the 1.50 unofficial patch, the AI players will never take a path leading through a stack of another player unless that is their intended target, and they are also able to chance orders on their troops every turn, ensuring that such "take-back" moves happen much less frequently. The advantage of the human player Due to turn order, the AI players are unable to break the treaty and attack in the same turn. See AI to Player Diplomacy for more information. This means that it is always safe to hit the End Turn button if there is a Wizard's Pact formed. Contrary to this, the human player can attack the same turn they Break Treaty. This means that they can always strike first, as long as the troops used for this purpose have sufficient movement allowance to reach their targets, providing a huge strategic advantage, The responsibility of the human player When forming an Alliance, the human player agrees not to enter a 2 square radius of the rival wizard's cities. Violating this will result in a negative Diplomatic Reaction. Repeated offense results in the AI wizard breaking the treaty. See AI to Player Diplomacy for more details. Although AI wizards also check for the presence of each other's troops, this check is done rarely instead of every turn, and does not have much of an effect. However, the 1.50 unofficial patch entirely removes this limitation for both human and AI players. In order to effectively fight together against enemies, access to travel though each other's territory, and the ability to have troops near allied cities to protect them, as well as the ability to not get punished if an enemy city is taken by the ally first while the other player's troops are also next to it, is necessary. Obligation to join wars. The two wizards joining in an Alliance are expected to both join a War if one of them gets involved in it. This is implemented differently in the three kinds of interactions. See Player to AI Diplomacy, AI to AI Diplomacy, Need for War and AI to Player Diplomacy for details. As a short summary, the AI player is required to accept a Declare War On request from the human player if and only if the human player is already at War with the target. However, the rest of the cases were poorly implemented, missing, or buggy in the official game, and the 1.50 unofficial patch is required to be able to fully experience this feature. Additionally, while the patch implements this feature, it also changes this obligation from an immediate, absolute one into an "over time" obligation. AI players will randomly join the War as turns elapse, and the human player is able to refuse the request without immediately losing the Alliance, albeit at a large Visible Relation penalty. Category:Diplomacy